Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday August 17, 2011 @02:05PM
from the next-gen-rocket-launchers dept.

MojoKid writes "id Software's long-awaited FPS, Rage, is set to ship in October. When it launches, Rage will be the first game to feature id's newest graphics engine, dubbed id Tech 5. id Tech 5 has evolved considerably since the company started talking about it four years ago, however. While it contains a number of additional features, MegaTexturing remains one of the game's most visible advances. MegaTexturing uses a single large texture to map the terrain of an entire area. Data from that texture is streamed in depending on where the player is standing and what's visible. Effects that would normally be blended in traditional tiled texturing can be baked into the megatexture and streamed off disc when needed. The advantage of megatexturing is that it allows artists to create unique environments rather than resorting to a variety of tricks to hide repetitive texture tiles."
id's Tim Willits spoke with Eurogamer about Rage's development, explaining how their goal of fast-paced action dictated certain design decisions. Rage will make use of Steamworks, but won't require a persistent connection for offline play. However, small parts of optional single-player content will only be available to players who buy the game new. Willits said, "Most people never find them. But as soon as you do, you're like, oh. And then you start to look for it. That's our first-time buyer incentive."

I'm a long term Id fan here. Let me start by saying the latest id-Tech engine looks awesome, but the buck stops there. The story and the characters look pretty cardboard, when they should be amazing if we're applying the technology uniformly over every possible realm of creativity.

There's a kind of goofy appearance to things, and you can see the split-second jitter when scripted sequences switch between one sequence and the next.

Also this looks too campy. It seems like Id is really missing some of the grit that it had back when it was released Quake. They had Nine Inch Nails do the soundtrack and a lot of the sounds were created by Trent Reznor. All that stuff went away when John Romero left, or at least most of it just fell by the wayside when John Romero forgot he was a cool kid and started making cellphone games instead of gritty grindhouse type stuff.

This appears to be nothing more than an engine release that is dressed up a bit in order to sell the technology.

Look at Battlefield 3; that is the kind of game I expect from Id Software, but we get something kinda goofy.

I'd like to see what Valve would do with this engine if they licensed it -- but I'm not convinced Valve needs it.

The strange warped physics game play is actually a lot of fun. It's not something I'd go through a second time, but the first play was definitely worth it. Enjoyable enough I'll be checking out Prey 2.

Likely, even now, the most widely used game engine developed by someone other than the developers of the game in question is the Unreal Tournament 3 engine from 2007.

I think John Carmack said at Quakeconn that they had no plans to license id Tech 5 externally at that point. Although that means Bethesda can still get their hands on it... I will be very excited if this leads to a Fallout 4 on id Tech 5.

Carmack has already stated during interviews that the id Tech 5 engine would not work with extremely open-ended worlds like Fallout and TES, so you're out of luck. And why would Bethesda not reuse their TES 5 engine for the Fallout series?

The problem is that they refuse to accept that fact [gamasutra.com]. They deliberately decided not to license out their idTech 5 engine. Then they spent more than four years creating content for their new engine. But by all accounts this content isn't any good, and the engine that looked amazing when it was first demoed, is now not so impressive. They really need to learn how to leverage their strengths or they won't survive another release.

Also don't forget that they always end-up opensourcing their previous generation of engines.As Rage is release, id Tech 4 (Doom3, Quake4, etc.) will be released under GPL.

So, even though no *commercial user* outside of the Zenimax corporation will use it, it will end-up being used for lots of crazy and funny projects by the community. And in the long term of thing, that counts a lot.(Just take a look at the current derivative of Quake 3's engine - lot's of them even included some Doom3-type of eye-candy)

After buying DOOM3 on reputation, I'm definitely not bothering with Rage unless it gets stellar reviews across the board. I'm kind of guessing there are plenty of other gamers out there with the same idea...

Are you kidding? The engine is great. They constructed it to be extremely modular. They can port a game to virtually any platform, including iOS and the consoles. It even uses the PS3 extremely efficiently. If the consoles last another 3 years, the engine will have done its job, but there's no doubt they'll use it on the PS Vita as well.

Except John has already said the engine is not suitable for those sorts of games:

He added that id Tech 5 is "not magic," and the engine is good for certain kinds of games such as Rage, but not as much for games such as Grand Theft Auto that render cities with lots of surface area.

"The megatexture direction [in id Tech 5] has some big wins, but it's also fairly restrictive on certain types of games," he said. "It would be a completely unacceptable engine to do [Bethesda's Elder Scrolls V:] Skyrim in, where you've got the whole world, walking across these huge areas."

That makes sense - I've done streamed terrain quadtrees and they are essentially a megatexture, but contains just height data (1 float of 4 bytes, but I've used 8 bits and 16 bits in the past). At the granularity I was using, I used up 2GB of disk for my terrain, and it wasn't overly large. Megatexturing simply is the same thing, but adds 12 (or 16, but terrain rarely needs alpha, so my bet is 12) bytes for color data, which would bring my quadtree up to 8GB. Oblivion was much larger than my terrain, but ma

Because it makes no sense to spend many years and millions of dollars on developing the game just to convince your own company to use it. If they wanted just an internal tech demo, they had it finished and ready years ago, skipping the 70% of the effort that is actually making a fun game.

Well to be fair Reznor started out working on the sounds for Doom3 (which can be heard in the "leaked" E3 Doom3 alpha). He dropped out of the project because it was just taking too long.

I have it on good authority he dropped out because he wasn't that much into it. Doom 3 was pretty bad, tbh.

Doom 1 & 2: technologically amazing, creative, dark and scary... total game changers.Quake: Flipped the industry in its ear. Half Life 2, created much later, was the only game that could replace Quake, and it was bu

One of the big things with previous iD games is their engines were amazing. They were some of the best things you'd ever seen. Good looking, ran well, etc, etc.

Then we get Doom 3. While the realtime lighting was nifty, after you played a bit it got annoying because everything was overly dark since there was no radiosity or other global illumination. It was also extremely resource intensive, you had to have a really hot computer to run it. Compared to Unreal Engine 2.5, it really wasn't that great. UE 2.5 looked nicer over all, despite not being as "advanced" and scaled much better.

Of course they've then been stuck on that for a long time. UE3 came out and was a far better engine, and we are now on UE3.5, and still nothing new from iD yet. iD Tech 4 has not aged gracefully at all. Brink is a wonderful example. Never mind the gameplay problems, it just doesn't look very good and doesn't run well given how it looks because of the engine.

You can see it in terms of licenses too. iD Tech 4 has a total of 6 games out, almost all of them either iD themselves, or Raven (who has always liked to make games using iD's stuff). UE3 has near 200, and it was released later.

I've had to correct your comments on the issue before; obviously you have forgotten the reason why UE3 has 200 odd game licenses - because they're actually licensing their engine. Guess who isn't..... they simply don't want to spend the time dealing with technical support and business matters.

The engine holds up fine with the right artwork, but Brink wasn't really an artistic masterpiece so much as an underdone attempt to grab back a share of the online player community. Plenty of Doom 3 mods have outdone i

Keep in mind that id tech is and always has been designed for a specific game/game genre and UE3 is not - it is designed for many different types of games. Different types of games need different asset management systems (an RPG is far different than a shooter).

Actually there were some legal issues surrounding the project apparently, and that was enough to screw up the relationship between them. John talks about it at some point in this Q&A [youtube.com], though I couldn't find the exact moment just by jumping around. It's definitely worth watching the whole thing anyway.

If we're lucky, maybe John will reply here in person to clear this up:)

I've always wondered what the actual story was behind his departure, because it almost seemed like tension between Reznor and Devine. There were vague statements at the time, and they both left the project in a relatively short time period of each other. I know in an interview years ago, the reason Reznor gave was that the project was taking too long and he was itching to work on more NIN stuff. At the time it seemed like a very diplomatic answer because he sort of blew it off and moved on to another

Meh... "silent story", to me, frequently means "blow lots of shit up first; we were too bored to make a story, so our fans will do that work for us". Not always, but frequently.

I tend to disagree. Some of the best games have no talking at all in them. Video game designers aren't that good at Hollywood scripts. If you look carefully at Rockstar Games... these guys KNOW how to do it. They know how to make a game feel like you're right there and you can get right into the story. The technology is there also, b

If you look carefully at Rockstar Games... these guys KNOW how to do it. They know how to make a game feel like you're right there and you can get right into the story.

I totally disagree. In the GTA games I find the 'story' is mostly just an annoying means of preventing me from doing what I want to do.

"Go to the other side of the map to start the mission. Watch a cutscene. Go back to the side you started on to get a car. Go back to the other side again to pick up a passenger. Get chased by a dozen bad guys as you drive back to the side of the map you started on. Oh dear, you got there five seconds too late. Go back and start again. But first, your cousin wants to play dar

I like LA Noire a lot, it's one of the most mature games I've played. That's "serious mature" and not "Leisure Suit Larry mature".

The only complaints I have is that it tends to railroad you quite badly in some parts and tends to hold your hand quite a lot so that sometimes it feels like you're just looking at clues in a sequence the game lays out for you instead of doing your own detective work.Then again, some of the clues are stupidly hard to find, frustratingly so from time to time.

Meh... "silent story", to me, frequently means "blow lots of shit up first; we were too bored to make a story, so our fans will do that work for us". Not always, but frequently.

I tend to disagree. Some of the best games have no talking at all in them. Video game designers aren't that good at Hollywood scripts.

Dragon age : Origins + NO Hero talking = Awesome.Dragon Age 2 + Hero who talks = Not as good as the original.SurvivorZero + Shameless plug for a game that only 4 people will play (and 3 of which are the creators) = laaaame.

SurvivorZero + Shameless plug for a game that only 4 people will play (and 3 of which are the creators) = laaaame.

I'm not developing this game and I have no affiliation with the team. You don't want to play a game where you are surrounded by zombies and you have to hack your way through it? It's gonna be fun! And I think it's gonna be free to download, but I could be mistaken.

I do. So I bought Left 4 Dead. And the second one. Do I want more competition in the zombie game arena? Sure. But... well, it's got to be COMPETITION. Not just, you know, another team making another game.

All I really know about id Tech 5 is that many posters here on slashdot claim to have seen previews and tech demos already, and they say it absolutely sucks.

I recall people saying it pales in comparison to any modern game engine, and in fact doesn't even hold up against Source, which is now 7 years old. Specifics included complaints about the polygon count being so low that you could see visible spikes on the heads, shoulders, etc. of characters and such.

Orange Box 2009. A fork of Orange Box for multiplayer games. Currently used by Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Day of Defeat: Source, Counter-Strike: Source, and Team Fortress 2. Client is Windows and Mac. Server is Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Left 4 Dead. Currently used by Left 4 Dead. Client is Windows and Mac. Server is Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Left 4 Dead 2. Currently used by Left 4 Dead 2. Client is Windows and Mac. Server is Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Alien Swam. Currently used by Alien Swarm. Client is Windows. Server is Windows.

Portal 2. Currently used by Portal 2. Client is Windows and Mac. No standalone server.

He said it three times... I just listened to this last week, so it was still fresh, and relatively easy to find.:-) Here is a partial transcript. In-Joy!

@42:36 One of the things that we were doing in our production side of things for cranking out our build games to rebuild all the games.@42:44 when we build our virtual textures for the dynamic stuff, it is this process that@42: 49 at one point it just took hours. I rewrote it to be such a way that it used huge amounts of memory mapped files and it got down much much faster@42:59 but it really started swapping on any system that we had.@43:02 So we said "Well let's find out what the actual limitations here are."@43:07 So we took one of our servers and we put 192 gigabytes of ram in it@43:12 And it, so [it] was like $5000. We used to spend more then $5000 on a desktop PC. You know we had $10,000 workstations back in the day.@43:22 But 192 _gigabytes_ of ram. And, I think back, OK 128 _bytes_ of RAM in the Atari 2600; 192 _gigabytes_ of RAM being used to build this. You know, greater then a factor of a billion. Now that is stretching from before my time to a server grade system here. That is 9 order of magnitude.

Isn't that jumping the gun just a little bit? Have you seen any statements from id that custom maps will be impossible? Don't you think they would put some sort of effort into making their games easy to make content for?

Isn't that jumping the gun just a little bit? Have you seen any statements from id that custom maps will be impossible? Don't you think they would put some sort of effort into making their games easy to make content for?

For modders, Carmack stated that they were going to release the 64-bit version of tools though there is going to be a limit to what people can do with it because there is a lot of infrastructure involved with the mega-textured worlds. Expect to build new gaming characteristics and multiplayer modes, but not much more than that for now. Keeping in mind there is over a 1TB of source material to build RAGE, they can’t possibly put that all up for download.

The unfortunate consequence of megatexturing is that nobody will be able to make custom maps for this. Carmack talked about needing an expensive server with 192GiB of RAM to compile the maps.

The technology is really impressive, but I can't imagine it being worth this. id has always been very friendly to the map/mod community—they're the last company I'd have expected this from.

A couple of years ago at QuakeCon John Carmack actually talked a bit about this and it's not at all surprising. He talked about how the problem for the mapping/modding community is that the games are so massively complex now it's nearly impossible to make anything of note without a software development team of your own. And he's right. Go back to the days of Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and Quake and you've got HUGE volumes of mods, maps, and so forth. You could actually bang out a fairly interesting little map

Modding is still extremely popular, the problem is just that many game engines have poor, if any, tools for modding them. The ones that do have good tools, they get mods a plenty. Have a look at the Nexus sites, Elder Scrolls Nexus, Dragon Age Nexus, and so on to see the massive amount of mods out there.

Likewise, look at Epic. They ran the "Make something Unreal," contest. Tons of mods came out of that, some fairly amazing done by small teams, but also plenty of good maps often done by a single guy. That is

Isn't the megatexturing feature optional? Couldn't you break up your texture into 16 "mini-megatextures" or something to cut down on the amount of memory you need for the compile? Or you can just buy a reasonably beefy machine with 16GB or 32GB with a fast SSD and simply accept that it will take you longer to compile the maps. Depending on what "compiling" them requires, it might not even be that bad. Carmak tweeted awhile back that the 192GB monster they built cut their compile times down a lot, but he

He didn't. He said that it was too slow due to swapping, so they built a server with 192GB of RAM. The reference wasn't about how slow building maps is, but relation to an old system that had 128 bytes of ram, and the fact that they can now build a system for less money that has over 9 orders of magnitude more of RAM.

It had nothing to do with actual efficiency, and I suspect that they will optimize the code (or you will just have to build it slowly with swapping).

gets sucked into steam.. sorry but i rather not be treated as a pirate first and a customer second. sadly most games including many indie titles have now jumped onto this bandwagon.used to be a pretty avid gamer, not so much anymore. steam pushed me away because i did not want to trade being treated well as a customer for the 'oh shiny' aspect of being able to piss off my isp for downloading multi-gig games and a in game chat function with other people playing other games.

Sadly though this also means that the release of the doom3 source code will most likely be the last time id releases their engine source code to the community. like it or not steam is a drm platform first and foremost. So by tying in steam into id tech 5 means that the release of the source code will be a no go because it might allow others to de-steam other titles easier.

gets sucked into steam.. sorry but i rather not be treated as a pirate first and a customer second. sadly most games including many indie titles have now jumped onto this bandwagon.used to be a pretty avid gamer, not so much anymore. steam pushed me away because i did not want to trade being treated well as a customer for the 'oh shiny' aspect of being able to piss off my isp for downloading multi-gig games and a in game chat function with other people playing other games.

Sadly though this also means that the release of the doom3 source code will most likely be the last time id releases their engine source code to the community. like it or not steam is a drm platform first and foremost. So by tying in steam into id tech 5 means that the release of the source code will be a no go because it might allow others to de-steam other titles easier.

Do you have any basis for such broad assumptions? All of the games which Id has already released source for are available on Steam, which debunks your conspiracy theory immediately. Though Steam does include DRM, it's the least intrusive type I've encountered. It has never added any restrictions on what I want to do with a game beyond the restrictions inherent in them being distributed only as binaries.

One thing it does prevent is easily transferring a game you've paid for to someone else, though I haven't

The key Difference is that those games were put on steam 'after' the release of their source code. doom, quake, quake2, quake3, etc. doom three came out just before steam as well. Rage will be the first game made by them with the possibility of source code release a few years down the line that has the steam platform integrated in.I am just saying that assuming; 1, steam is still around in a few years time. 2. id is still around in a few years time. that if both conditions are met then it is not likely that

sorry but i rather not be treated as a pirate first and a customer second.

You say that, but you then admit a few things Steam does, which you just don't care about:

i did not want to trade being treated well as a customer for the 'oh shiny' aspect of being able to piss off my isp for downloading multi-gig games and a in game chat function with other people playing other games.

Well, I do like those things, except my current ISP doesn't suck.

I like being able to buy a game, go do something for 15 minutes, and then have it ready to play, without having to leave the house. At the moment (for the next few days, at least), I'm in a small enough town that the only other real option is buying discs from, say, Wall-Mart -- which isn't exactly convenient, considering I'd then need to do some research and find out if I need to keep the disc around, how I can make backups of that game, etc.

I like being able to buy a new computer, type my Steam username and password, and within a few hours, have all the games I care about installed -- and, surprisingly, with my savegames, keybindings, and other settings included.

I like being able to message a friend, in or out of game, and just jump into whatever game they're playing (assuming we both own the same game), or invite them into mine. For that matter, I like that the Steam dashboard seems to apply to most Steam games, even the ones which (thanks, EA) try to get me to sign up for their own competing service -- I can instantly pull that up and see the current time, a web browser, etc. I can click a player's name from an in-game menu and have it pop the browser open to their Steam profile. All this without alt-tabbing, in a nice translucent overlay so I can see what's happening in-game.

I like that all my games stay patched without me having to check them individually, and I've known Steam to even bother me to update my video drivers occasionally. If I could do everything through a similar package manager (like Windows Update, maybe), I would, but better a unified platform like Steam than each game adding something to my system tray, or having to check each game's website for updates.

If I can find a game without DRM, I'll buy it over Steam any day -- but, surprisingly, the Humble Indie Bundle included Steam activation anyway. If a game includes extra DRM on top of Steam, I won't buy it, which means I still have to pay attention -- I was a hair away from buying Arkham Asylum when I realized it had SecuROM on top of Steam -- and I think Steam itself warned me about this. Most of the time, I'll stick to indie games with Linux ports.

But Portal 2 was one of the best games I've ever played, and I'm not going to miss out on that experience because I can't play it on Linux, or... wait, is there anything else I actually want to do with a game that Steam prevents me from doing?

Sadly though this also means that the release of the doom3 source code will most likely be the last time id releases their engine source code to the community. like it or not steam is a drm platform first and foremost.

Bullshit. Again, the Humble Indie Bundle (at least the latest one) includes Steam activation codes. If you remember, almost all of the original Humble Indie Bundle games released their source. For that matter, you can buy Quake 3 Arena on Steam, and its source is released -- and I seem to remember that id games have included things like CD checks in the past. I much prefer Steam to putting a CD in the drive every time I play -- I've got a terabyte hard drive in my gaming rig, there's no excuse for that.

So by tying in steam into id tech 5 means that the release of the source code will be a no go because it might allow others to de-steam other titles easier.

If so, why wouldn't they have the same problem have existed with other engines? Quake 4 shipped with a CD check

Again, the Humble Indie Bundle (at least the latest one) includes Steam activation codes. If you remember, almost all of the original Humble Indie Bundle games released their source....

Since the Humble Indie Bundle not only doesn't require steam, but can be had mostly open source, clearly having a Steam version isn't an impediment to having a non-Steam version, or even an open source version. And clearly having the source to the non-Steam version doesn't compromise Steam's DRM.

Ad-homium.I find it funny though the same people who say 'don't agree with it? don't buy it.' say that, then say something along the lines you did when they encounter someone 'actually' practicing what they preach.

for the record, i have not used windows for almost a decade because i did not like how they bent over backwards to abstract video and sound hardware for no other purpose but to continually monitor if the media content your watching or listening too is legal. stability was a side benefit.If a game

Am I the only one who thinks that Rage looks a lot like Borderlands, but without the variation in weapons? I haven't come across such a comparison yet, but it was the first (and still prevalent) thought I had upon seeing the trailer.

I was reading down the replies wondering the same thing. Borderlands was the first thing that came to mind. I also don't see the WOW factor in the landscape, perhaps I've been watching too many BF3 trailers.

There was an article a few weeks back about the Journalist's preview of Rage, and there were many comparisons between it and Borderlands (which officially announced they were making Borderlands 2).

I've played a lot of Borderlands, and seen trailers of Rage, and can tell you that the artistry is vastly different. Sure it may be using the same colours (brown (light), brown (medium) & brown (dark)) in bothe games, but the style of drawing in Borderlands is more cartoony.

I can see every little detail of the textures in the lame fucking grindfest! Look at the incredible lighting as I fight the same shitty enemies as in every other goddamned FPS! This millionth hall that I'm running looks INCREDIBLE!

I can count on one hand:Mass Effect 2: Droid, Humanoid, Geth, ReaverHunted: Demons/undead who melee, demons/undead who shoot, spidersFallout: Bandits, bugs, dogs, mutantsDoom: Demons who shoot, demons who meleeCoD: Other Soldiers, Other player

You do realize that I said "version" and not "direct identical port" and that the AC is still wrong when he flat-out said "No" and that a "real computer" is required, because, in one form or another, Rage is available for iOS, right?

In the same way that the "full web browsing experience" is available on your iphone AND your computer... but only if your computer does NOT have flash installed.

On the suicide note from your other troll post: the suicide rate at the Foxconn factories are less than the suicide rate at US universities.

Yeah, no nets to catch jumpers at US institutions. Or maybe it's because students at US institutions realize that there is no hope for them, since they weren't born wealthy, and the chinese aren't quite so dis-illusioned with their chances.

... or maybe paying someone for the privilege of wasting your time is more depressing than getting paid for it? No matter what, you're comparing apples to oranges... but nice try. You know there's a journal article being reported on that talks about fanbois taking criti

Foxconn's factories are a mini-city. I'm sure if you compare US city suicide rates to Foxconn mini-city suicide rates, they'd be comparable. It's only really an outrage if their suicide rate was 3x or more higher than US suicide rates.

I dislike Apple software but as an electrical engineer, I'm a huge fan of their hardware.

Foxconn's factories are a mini-city. I'm sure if you compare US city suicide rates to Foxconn mini-city suicide rates, they'd be comparable. It's only really an outrage if their suicide rate was 3x or more higher than US suicide rates.

I dislike Apple software but as an electrical engineer, I'm a huge fan of their hardware.

... so, yeah, let's compare an industrial-park-turned-city to a... regular city. I expect that a highly regulated, patrolled and enforced living arrangement would have less suicides because of the intense amount of oversight. Again, if you want to compare apples to oranges... you've got another point. But if you'd like to join us in the real world...

Unfortunately they seem to be backing off from Linux support. One of their coders said he'd like to do a port, but it would have to be on his own time... Hopefully we'll see it happen, and it won't turn out like the promised UT3 Linux version that Epic abandoned.

No, their past games have shipped with Linux binaries, or had binaries available on the internet at release time. Even Quake 4 had a Linux client on release. They've never pushed if off like this. What you might be thinking of is the GPL source code releases.

Quake Wars did not have a Linux client for several months. I did not buy it until it did. I will do the same here. I run Linux. Yes I can do workarounds, but I will not buy software I have to work around.

I will give you the benefit that you probably have not made a game before, so you probably dont understand what MegaTextures really mean to an artist. Your statement is incorrect and too bad comments like these go out everywhere before actually doing some research into the topic. It may be slightly more work for an artist to pull off, but it also gives the artist more freedom to shape the game world that many of us will be spending hours in. Thank you Id Tech 5!